“I have already heard of the treasures of Tinto,” said John, glad that there was something civil to say.
Pat Torrance nodded his head with much self-satisfaction. “Yes, we’ve got a thing or two,” he said. “I’m not a connoisseur myself. I know they’ve cost a fortune—that’s about all I’m qualified to judge of. But Lady Car knows all about them. You would think it was she and not I they belonged to by nature. But come and judge for yourself. I’m not a man to be suspicious of old friends.”
And here he laughed once more, with obvious offensive meaning; but it took John some time to make out what that meaning could be. His visitor had been for some time gone, fortunately for all parties, before it burst upon him. He divined then, that it was he who was supposed to have been poor Carry’s lover, and that her husband’s object was the diabolical one of increasing her misery by the sight of the man whom she had loved and forsaken. Why had she forsaken Beaufort for this rude barnyard hero? Was it for the sake of his great house, which happily was not visible from Dalrulzian, but which dominated half the county with gingerbread battlements, and the flag that floated presumptuous as if the house were a prince’s? Had Carry preferred mere wealth, weighed by such a master, to the congenial spirit of her former lover? It fretted the young man even to think of such a possibility. And the visitors had fretted him each in some special point. They neutralised the breadth of the external landscape with their narrow individuality and busy bustling little schemes. He went out to breathe an air more wholesome, to find refuge from that close pressure of things personal, and circumscribed local scenery, in the genial quietness and freshness of the air outside. How busy they all were in their own way, how intent upon their own plans, how full of suspicion and criticism of each other! Outside all was quiet—the evening wind breathing low, the birds in full chorus. John refreshed himself with a long walk, shaking off his discouragement and partial disgust. Peggy Burnet was at her door, eager to open the gate for him as he passed. She had just tied a blue handkerchief about the pot containing her “man’s” tea, which her eldest child was about to carry. As he sauntered up the avenue, this child, a girl about ten, tied up so far as her shoulders were concerned in a small red-tartan shawl, but with uncovered head and bare legs and feet, overtook him, skimming along the road with her bundle. She admitted, holding down her head shyly, that she was little Peggy, and was carrying her father his tea. “He’s up in the fir-wood on the top of the hill. He’ll no’ be back as long as it’s light.”
“But that is a long walk for you,” said John.
“It’s no’ twa miles, and I’m fond, fond to get into the woods,” said Peggy. She said “wudds,” and there was a curious singsong in the speech to John’s unaccustomed ears. When she went on she did not curtsey to him as a well-conditioned English child would have done, but gave him a merry nod of her flaxen head, which was rough with curls, and sped away noiseless and swift, the red shawl over her shoulders, which was carefully knotted round her waist and made a bunch of her small person, showing far off through the early greenness of the brushwood. When she had gone on a little, she began to sing like a bird, her sweet young voice rising on the air as if it had wings. It was an endless song that Peggy sang, like that of Wordsworth’s reaper—
“Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending.”
It went winding along, a viewless voice, beyond the house, along the slopes, away into the paleness of the hilltop, where the tall pine-trunks stood up like columns against the light. It was like the fresh scent of those same pines—like the aromatic peat-smoke in the air—a something native to the place, which put the troubles and the passions he had stumbled against out of the mind of the young laird. He was reconciled somehow to Scotland and to nature by little Peggy’s love for the “wudds,” and the clear ringing melody of her endless song.
VIII
In the midst of all the attentions paid him by his neighbours and the visitors who followed each other day by day, there was one duty which John Erskine had to fulfil, and which made a break in the tide of circumstances which seemed to be drifting him towards the family at Lindores, and engaging him more and more to follow their fortunes. When a life is as yet undecided and capable of turning in a new direction, it is common enough, in fact as well as in allegory, that a second path should be visible, branching off from the first, into which the unconscious feet of the wayfarer might still turn, were the dangers of the more attractive way divined. There is always one unobtrusive turning which leads to the safe track; but how is the traveller to know that, whose soul is all unconscious of special importance in the immediate step it takes? John Erskine contemplated his rapprochement to the Lindores with the greatest complacency and calm. That it could contain any dangers, he neither knew nor would have believed: he wanted nothing better than to be identified with them, to take up their cause and be known as their partisan. Nevertheless Providence silently, without giving him any warning, opened up the
